10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019: Bill Gates at Technology Review
In some parts of this introduction Mr. Gates is talking his book so earnestly it is almost adorable.
That is the first and last time I will ever place 'Mr. Gates" and "adorable' in such close proximity.
From MIT's Technology Review:
How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
We asked Gates to choose this year’s list of inventions that will change the world for the better.
The thinking behind this year’s list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies began with the plow.
I was honored when MIT Technology
Review invited me to be the first guest curator of its 10 Breakthrough
Technologies. Narrowing down the list was difficult. I wanted to choose
things that not only will create headlines in 2019 but captured this
moment in technological history—which got me thinking about how
innovation has evolved over time.
My mind went to—of all things—the plow. Plows are an excellent
embodiment of the history of innovation. Humans have been using them
since 4000 BCE, when Mesopotamian farmers aerated soil with sharpened
sticks. We’ve been slowly tinkering with and improving them ever since,
and today’s plows are technological marvels.
But what exactly is the purpose of a plow? It’s a tool that creates
more: more seeds planted, more crops harvested, more food to go around.
In places where nutrition is hard to come by, it’s no exaggeration to
say that a plow gives people more years of life. The plow—like many
technologies, both ancient and modern—is about creating more of
something and doing it more efficiently, so that more people can
benefit.
Contrast that with lab-grown meat, one of the innovations I picked
for this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies list. Growing animal
protein in a lab isn’t about feeding more people. There’s enough
livestock to feed the world already, even as demand for meat goes up.
Next-generation protein isn’t about creating more—it’s about making meat
better. It lets us provide for a growing and wealthier world without
contributing to deforestation or emitting methane. It also allows us to
enjoy hamburgers without killing any animals.
Put another way, the plow improves our quantity of life, and lab-grown meat improves our quality
of life. For most of human history, we’ve put most of our innovative
capacity into the former. And our efforts have paid off: worldwide life
expectancy rose from 34 years in 1913 to 60 in 1973 and has reached 71
today.
Because we’re living longer, our focus is starting to shift toward
well-being. This transformation is happening slowly. If you divide
scientific breakthroughs into these two categories—things that improve
quantity of life and things that improve quality of life—the 2009 list
looks not so different from this year’s. Like most forms of progress,
the change is so gradual that it’s hard to perceive. It’s a matter of
decades, not years—and I believe we’re only at the midpoint of the
transition.
To be clear, I don’t think humanity will stop trying to extend life
spans anytime soon. We’re still far from a world where everyone
everywhere lives to old age in perfect health, and it’s going to take a
lot of innovation to get us there. Plus, “quantity of life” and “quality
of life” are not mutually exclusive. A malaria vaccine would both save
lives and make life better for children who might otherwise have been
left with developmental delays from the disease.
We’ve reached a point where we’re tackling both ideas at once, and
that’s what makes this moment in history so interesting. If I had to
predict what this list will look like a few years from now, I’d bet
technologies that alleviate chronic disease will be a big theme. This
won’t just include new drugs (although I would love to see new
treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s on the list). The innovations
might look like a mechanical glove that helps a person with arthritis
maintain flexibility, or an app that connects people experiencing major
depressive episodes with the help they need....
Why it mattersIf robots could learn to deal with the messiness of the real world, they could do many more tasks.
Key PlayersOpenAI Carnegie Mellon University University of Michigan UC Berkeley
Availability3-5 years
Robots are teaching themselves to handle the physical world.
For
all the talk about machines taking jobs, industrial robots are still
clumsy and inflexible. A robot can repeatedly pick up a component on an
assembly line with amazing precision and without ever getting bored—but
move the object half an inch, or replace it with something slightly
different, and the machine will fumble ineptly or paw at thin air.
But
while a robot can’t yet be programmed to figure out how to grasp any
object just by looking at it, as people do, it can now learn to
manipulate the object on its own through virtual trial and error.
One
such project is Dactyl, a robot that taught itself to flip a toy
building block in its fingers. Dactyl, which comes from the San
Francisco nonprofit OpenAI, consists of an off-the-shelf robot hand
surrounded by an array of lights and cameras. Using what’s known as
reinforcement learning, neural-network software learns how to grasp and
turn the block within a simulated environment before the hand tries it
out for real. The software experiments, randomly at first, strengthening
connections within the network over time as it gets closer to its goal.
It
usually isn’t possible to transfer that type of virtual practice to the
real world, because things like friction or the varied properties of
different materials are so difficult to simulate. The OpenAI team got
around this by adding randomness to the virtual training, giving the
robot a proxy for the messiness of reality.
We’ll
need further breakthroughs for robots to master the advanced dexterity
needed in a real warehouse or factory. But if researchers can reliably
employ this kind of learning, robots might eventually assemble our
gadgets, load our dishwashers, and even help Grandma out of bed. —Will Knight
New-wave nuclear power
Bob Mumgaard/Plasma Science and Fusion Center/MIT
Advanced fusion and fission reactors are edging closer to reality.
New
nuclear designs that have gained momentum in the past year are
promising to make this power source safer and cheaper. Among them are
generation IV fission reactors, an evolution of traditional designs;
small modular reactors; and fusion reactors, a technology that has
seemed eternally just out of reach. Developers of generation IV fission
designs, such as Canada’s Terrestrial Energy and Washington-based
TerraPower, have entered into R&D partnerships with utilities,
aiming for grid supply (somewhat optimistically, maybe) by the 2020s.
Small
modular reactors typically produce in the tens of megawatts of power
(for comparison, a traditional nuclear reactor produces around 1,000
MW). Companies like Oregon’s NuScale say the miniaturized reactors can
save money and reduce environmental and financial risks.
From sodium-cooled fission to advanced fusion, a fresh generation of projects hopes to rekindle trust in nuclear energy.
There
has even been progress on fusion. Though no one expects delivery before
2030, companies like General Fusion and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an
MIT spinout, are making some headway. Many consider fusion a pipe
dream, but because the reactors can’t melt down and don’t create
long-lived, high-level waste, it should face much less public resistance
than conventional nuclear. (Bill Gates is an investor in TerraPower and
Commonwealth Fusion Systems.) —Leigh Phillips
